Nearly 6,000 state tax returns still waiting review

Tax returns for 5,700 people are still waiting to be reviewed because of the identity verification process the Louisiana Department of Revenue has implemented to crack down on tax fraud.

Kizzy Payton, who serves as press secretary for the department, said the process could delay refunds for people asked to verify their identity by several months.

“With the occurrences of identity theft growing each day, especially in the tax arena, protecting taxpayers from identity theft is a top priority for LDR,” she said. “To do this, LDR put a process in place to identify suspicious returns. From there, an identity quiz is required to ensure the person filing the return — and receiving a refund — is the right person. Because these suspicious returns and quizzes require additional handling and review outside the normal tax return process, it does take extra time to get the taxpayer their refund.

“When taxpayers are directed to take an identity verification quiz, and they pass the quiz, their return will continue to be processed within the normal 21-day time frame. If a taxpayer fails the quiz or indicates they would prefer to not take it, the process is delayed for a period of 60-90 days due to the manual review and processing of the return and refund.”

Despite the delay, Payton said she doesn’t see it as a problem for the department.

“Since the identity verification process has become an integral part of return processing, we don’t see the selected returns as backlog,” she said. “With that said, as of today, 5,700 returns are awaiting review through the identity verification process.”

In a press release earlier this year, Secretary of Revenue Tim Barfield acknowledged that the extra steps could be frustrating for taxpayers.

“We recognize that this situation places an undeserved burden on the thousands of taxpayers who consistently do the right thing,” he said. “It is unfortunate that at this time the good taxpayers will suffer for those who have chosen to be criminals. This is the very reason why the Department of Revenue must do all that we can to safeguard our taxpayers against this type of fraudulent activity.”

Payton said that as of May 15, Department of Revenue had received 1,731,704 returns and issued 1,290,430 refunds. Approximately 6.5 percent of all returns required the extra step for identity verification.